Obama lays wreath at Shanksville memorial

On Deadline will be live blogging 9/11 related events today, with reports from USA TODAY correspondents and links to important developments across the country.

Updateat 1:26 p.m. ET: The playing of taps marks the end of the Sept. 11 ceremony at the World Trade Center site in New York City following the reading of 2,983 names of victims.

Update at 1:24 p.m. ET: NBC reports that a Facebook user posted on the White House page threatening messages warning of new 9/11-style attacks.

Update at 12:59 p.m. ET: The Associated Press reports that during President Obama's visit to the Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, Pa., one man called out: "Thanks for getting bin Laden!"

Update at 12:06 p.m. ET: USA TODAY's Martha Moore, at Ground Zero, reports that sisters Maureen Wheeler and Michelle Fallon filled empty water bottles with water from the memorial pools when they found the name of their brother David Ruddle, a carpenter who was working in the south tower. "It's like a resting place for him," Fallon says. The sisters put his name on their parents headstone but the memorial "is like a resting place for him," she says. "It's peaceful to know that he's remembered," Wheeler says. "It's like being with him again."

Update at 12:04 p.m. ET: The Obamas did not make any public remarks, but are meeting with families of victims and local dignitaries.

Update at 11:56 a.m. ET: President Obama, accompanied by first lady Michelle Obama, places a wreath at the Shanksville memorial.

Update at 11:37 a.m. ET: Pennsylvania State Police helicopters are buzzing overhead near the Shanksville memorial site, scouring the area in preparation for President Obama's visit this morning, USA TODAY's Haya El Nasser reports.

Update at 11:31 a.m. ET: Al-Jazeera, quoting an exclusive interview with a former Taliban former minister, reports that the Taliban proposed to the U.S. long before 9/11 to turn Osama bin Laden over for trial for earlier terrorist activities. Al-Jazeera quotes the CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time of 9/11 as confirming the reported proposal, but says no one in the U.S. government took the offer seriously, considering it a "ploy."

Update at 10:35 a.m. ET: Paul Simon sings Sounds of Silence at the 9/11 memorial ceremonies in New York City.

Update at 10:21 a.m. ET: At the Shanksville ceremonies, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett says: "This place is like no other ... passengers of Flight 93 charted a new course . They engaged in that battle armed only with the knowledge that they were right."

Update at 10:16 a.m. ET: Biden: "The 9/11 generation ranks upon the greatest our nation has ever produced. It was born, it was born, it was born right here on 9/11."

Update at 10:14 am. ET: Biden: "We will not stop, you will not stop, until al-Qaeda is not only destructed, but completely dismantled and ultimately destroyed."

Update at 10:11 a.m. ET: Biden, speaking at the Pentagon ceremonies: "Those in the building that day knew what they were witnessing. it was a declaration of war by stateless actors bent on changing our way of life." Biden says the attackers thought America would buckle, but "they did not know us."

Update at 10:03 a.m. ET: With voices often breaking with emotion, family members read the names of every one of the 40 victims aboard the plane that passengers brought down in a field in Pennsylvania to thwart the terrorists.

Update at 9:58 a.m. ET: Ceremonies in Shanksville, Pa., begin with the Johnstown Symphony Children's Choir singing the national anthem.

Update at 9:55 a.m. ET: Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen speaks at the Pentagon ceremonies, USA TODAY's Oren Dorell reports. After the attacks, he says, "America reached forth with the outstretched arm and clenched fist of an angry nation ... to make sure a day like this never happens again."

Update at 9:12 a.m. ET: The former president reads from a letter that President Lincoln wrote to a Civil War widow who had lost five sons in battle. Lincoln said he knew that his words would be be "weak and fruitless" at a time of such grief, but added that he could not refrain from expressing the "thanks of the republic they died to save." "I pray that our heavenly father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you on the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom," Lincoln writes in the letter that Bush quotes.

Update at 9:05 a.m. ET: Former president George W. Bush speaks at Ground Zero.

Update at 9:01 a.m. ET: At Shanksville, Pa., the crowds also marked a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. to note the first impact of a plane on the World Trade Center 10 years ago today. USA TODAY's Haya El Nasser reports that John Smith, a resident of Indiana, is one of the 70,000 donors who contributed and helped raise money for the first phase of the Pennsylvania memorial. Smith had never been here and decided to come for the event. "I had always wanted to come," says Smith, 67. "I decided this was the year to come." "The passengers on the flight had an impact on history," Smith says. "We're honoring people who took control." The memorial? "It exceeded my expectations ... Outstanding."

Update at 8:56 a.m. ET: Family members of 9/11 victims begin reading names at Ground Zero. The first name is Gordon M. Aamoth Jr.

Update at 8:52 a.m. ET: President Obama opens today's tribute to the thousands who died on 9/11 with a reading from Psalms 46, saying "God is our strength" and "therefore we will not fear." "The Lord of hosts is with us," he says."The God of Jacob is our refuge."

Update at 8:50 a.m. ET: Mourners observe moment of silence in NYC on the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks. The moments mark the times that each plane hit the towers; when each tower fell; and the attacks on the Pentagon and Flight 93. Houses of worship throughout the city were asked to toll their bells for the first moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., which marks when the first plane hit the North Tower. The first moment of silence hushed the crowd and brought some to tears, USA TODAY"s Martha Moore reports..

Update at 8:48 a.m. ET: Bell tolls at Ground Zero to mark start of first minute's silence on 10th anniversary of 9/11 attacks.

Update at 7:50 a.m. ET: President Obama has arrived in New York City for the 9/11 ceremonies, the BBC reports.

Update at 7:34 a.m. ET: At an outdoor Mass in Acona, an Italian port city, Pope Benedict XVI prayed today for the victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and their loved ones and appealed to the world to resist what he called the "temptation toward hatred," the AP reports. "I invite the leaders of nations and men of good will to always refuse violence as the solution to problems, to resist the temptation toward hatred and to work in society, inspired by the principles of solidarity, justice and peace," the pope said.

Update at 7:21 a.m. ET: Relatives of those lost on 9/11 have begun arriving early in Lower Manhattan to pass through a heavily guarded perimeter around a "frozen zone" extending several blocks out from the 16-acre World Trade Center site, USA TODAY's Rick Hampson reports.

Talat Hamdani, who returned to the Trade Center site for a Sept. 11 observance for the first time since 2002, is scheduled to read the name of some of the fallen, including her son Salman. He was a young EMT and lab tech on his way to work when he apparently changed course and went to Ground Zero to help.

For the past eight years Talat Hamdani spent Sept. 11 quietly at home on Long Island with her two sons. But she decided to attend the ceremony this year because "I want to pay tribute to him.''

At Congressional hearings held earlier this year by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., on Islamic extremism in the U.S., Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the only Muslim in Congress, cited Salman Hamdani as an example of a patriotic and selfless Muslim American.

"I feel I owe it to my son to be there to read his name,'' she says today. "My being there acknowledges his sacrifice as an American hero. I am not a crying mother. I am a proud mother. This is my country.''

Update at 7:13 a.m. ET: Nearly 80 U.S. servicemembers have been wounded and two Afghan civilians killed in a Taliban truck bombing targeting an American base in eastern Afghanistan, NATO says.

The blast, which occurred late Saturday, shaved the facades from shops outside the Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in Wardak province and broke windows in government offices nearby, according to a former parliamentarian who runs a clinic in the nearby town of the same name, the Associated Press reports.

The Taliban claims responsibility for the attack. It was carried out by a Taliban suicide bomber who detonated a large bomb inside a truck carrying firewood, NATO says.

Spokesman Maj. Russell Fox says that all the international troops at the combat outpost are American.

The truck bombing came hours after the Taliban vowed to keep fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan until all American troops leave the country and stressed that their movement had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks, the AP reports.

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul held a memorial service to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. A military band played as American troops raised an American flag in front of about 300 assembled U.S. and Afghan officials.

7:08 a.m. ET:USA TODAY's Haya El Nasser is in Shanksville, Pa. She reports that it is beautiful September morning there and lines of cars are winding up their way up the hill to the Flight 93 National Monument. Traffic was was already backed up at 6:30 a.m., she reports.

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